I have a production database on which I have 5 major views which need to be compared against the same kind (same view structure) in the development environment.

I tried to retrieve the schema and it just keeps on spinning and I see no progress. Please let me know if the database schema are different, can't we compare specific tables and views alone with SQL Data Compare?

I also experienced this and was able to resolve this issue by creating a new project. My project had other symptoms of corruption, maybe your project has only a minor corruption causing this. Try creating a new project and see if it loads more quickly.

Just to add to the post, I had the same issue. Turned out a colleague had restored the test database and wiped out my access. So, SQL Data Compare could not access the database. I needed to refresh the Logins in SQL Management Studio to see that I was no longer a user. Might also have helped if SQL Data Compare pointed this out too. Now a little bit wiser.